


Freedom is an Illusion

by timeheist



Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 19:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeheist/pseuds/timeheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson accidentally let a djinn learn his name... and now he's stuck with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freedom is an Illusion

**Author's Note:**

> If you've not read the Bartimaeus books (there's a trilogy and then a prequel of sorts) by Jonathan Stroud... you need to do so! Basically all you need to know is that Although I think the titular character himself says what has to be said about this latest crossover idea best: “And then, as if written by the hand of a bad novelist, an incredible thing happened.”

“And such, there are ninety nine point eight reasons why my plan is conceivably greater than yours, John Watson.”

“Yes but I – I – Sherlock, I am the huma – don’t you dare fly out that windo – damn it all, Sherlock!”

John Watson – who, really, should have been going by ‘Master’ or ‘Sir’ or even ‘Jonah Towns’ sighed exasperatedly and resisted the urge to throw his snuff box (complete with summoning charms and spirit) into the Thames and be done with it. Fifty years of peace before the djinni got out of that one. Not that it would work; he’d gone and let a djinni work out his real name and he was twice damned for it because instead of just killing him in a painful manner and going back to the void, this djinni seemed quite content to hang around like a bad penny, try to convince the rest of London that it was a human, cause trouble for Watson by making everyone think that Jonah Towns was ‘that kind of man’, and generally make a public nuisance of himself…!

He was seriously beginning to wish he hadn’t woken up one morning and decide to go and learn how to be a magician. What good had it done him? A bad war, a bad leg, and bad luck summoning his first out-of-service djinni that would seem to last him a lifetime. Bad luck, all in all. Not to mention the fact that a djinni had absolutely no respect for modern Victorian values or the fact that John/Jonah had, in fact, gotten into the field of magic to further the field of medicine rather than the field of homicide investigation. Scotland Yard seemed to feel rather the same way, demanding that he keep his djinni on a tighter leash, and he had wound up summoning ifrits to accompany him when he shared what Sherlock – for that was what his wayward djinni called itself – had found out just for the sake of looking how he was supposed to.

Maybe he should just retire to the country, open a bee farm, and let the damned thing do whatever it liked. Why it had to take the form of a human – on all thirteen planes of existence, it was quite adamant, and John should be cowering in awe – he didn’t know. Every book he had read said that djinni craved the endless emptiness of their realm they came from. That the longer they spend in the human world, the more pain they were in. So what, had he summoned a masochistic djinni as well as a genius one? Mrs Hudson was of course enamoured with it, and so was Irene down the road, and it’d attracted that damned Moriarty fellow as well who had nearly had John shot and killed over it, only a few weeks back. Even worse was that it insisted on a particularly attractive human form and that appreciation for the things intelligence was even starting to rub off on John!

John leaned over the edge of the window of his Baker Street flat – leased out to the both of them, heaven help him – and tried to see where the attractive-but-bedraggled-human-djinni-turned-raven had flown off to. It was sitting rather smugly on the top of a nearby lamppost, and John resisted the urge to lob a pharmaceutical book at it as he threw on the glasses that would allow him to see more planes of existence – an invention of Sherlock’s, one he had to grudgingly admit wasn’t an explosion waiting to happen – and bounded down the stairs after him. He had to admit, much as he hated to do so, that the thrill of all this was doing wonders for him. There was nothing much to be done at Bart’s, his marriage to Mary had fallen through after the war… His limp even seemed to be improving from all the exercise of chasing a sociopathic-rather-than-psychopathic djinni around London. Not to mention the journals he planned to write if Sherlock ever buggered off and gave him a moment’s peace.

“Would you hurry up, John! Time is of the essence and we may not get a second chance at discovering Moriarty’s current whereabouts!”

John hissed angrily about what-did-we-say-about-real-names, a curse of agony on his lips – just because it could rebound on him tenfold since the djinni had the power of his real name didn’t stop John from wanting to punish him into proper, polite submission – but the spell died on his lips. Still, Sherlock shuddered, glowering at him reproachfully in the form of a sleek black cat with its claws pressed down on the throat of a shuddering rat that clearly wasn’t a rat at all. John adjusted the glasses, peering down at it.

“…Ifrit?”

“Obviously. Notice the aura hanging around its cerebral cortex – that’s the brain-“

“I know, Sherlock, I’m a doctor.”

“And the fact that its fear is obviously a show.” Sherlock ignored him, carrying on its usual habit of showing off. “It’s been trying to sink its teeth into your foot since I adjusted my grip on its neck. It also has dust on its tail and what smells like paint oil, paint that is unique to the ships down at the docks if not mistaken. And I am not mistaken. Perhaps the shipyard.”

“Don’t you have anything better to do than chasing a madman and his djinni across London and nearly getting me killed?”

“That depends.” Sherlock seemed to sneer even through the maw of a cat, the hair on his back standing on end as he played with his captured minor djinni. “Didn’t you have something better to do when you thought you’d summon me from a nice quiet rest and enslave me to your service for something so banal as closing a wound?”

“He was bleeding to death!”

“Thank heavens he had you there to save him Mister Towns.” The sarcasm was almost caustic, and John leaned back onto his haunches and straightened up once more, tapping his feet agitatedly and straightening the top hat on his brow. “Besides, the hospital is boring. Now if you don’t mind.” Even as he leapt Sherlock had turned from cat to raven once more, and taken to the air. “I have a crime to solve.”

He was completely out of sight before John managed to shout after him: “I very much do mind!”

Perhaps the snuffbox wasn’t such a bad idea after all.


End file.
